


One Afternoon in Your Next Incarnation

by kessei



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2018-10-14 15:43:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10539513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kessei/pseuds/kessei
Summary: This lifetime isn't Cat Grant's first rodeo.  She has the unique burden of being able to remember millennia's worth of her prior incarnations.  Relationships have often been difficult for her as a result, and she's muddled through the heart-break of trying to learn to connect with lovers and children who are with her for only a short, sharp time.  Years after the events of Supergirl, the world begins to realize that Supergirl doesn't seem to be aging.  However, by that time Cat and Kara haven't spoken in years. Could Kara be the constant companion that Cat has needed? While Cat feels it'd be too difficult and cumbersome to reconnect with Kara in this lifetime, there's always the next....





	1. Building Legacies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarNikita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarNikita/gifts).



2060 CE

Catherine Grant took off her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose where they pinched. She let the large print book lay open in her lap. Occasionally someone would comment on her practice of reading books; they’d suggest it’s ironic that the founder of a multi-media empire eschewed neural direct-play in favor of the tactile anachronism of bound paper. These individuals were simply acquaintances, though, never friends. Though in truth, she had few of the latter.

Mid-day light shone through the translucent curtains on her windows, and the small refractive fibers of the curtains caused ribbons of rainbow to dance on the contents of Cat’s study. The effect was beautiful, but they were starting to give her a damn headache. “Betǝya, darken all the curtains.” A soft tone was the only indication that the household’s computer system registered the command, but the light began to fade immediately as the curtains shifted to opacity.

“They say that sitting in dark rooms is a symptom of a depressive inflammation,” came her younger son’s teasing baritone from the corner. Cat could see him twisting in his chair to switch on a nearby Tiffany lamp – another of her eccentric anachronisms.

“They can think whatever they want,” Cat replied as she shut the book in her lap and leaned into the chair, willing a dull ache in her hips and lower back to fade. “The light was hurting my eyes.” Carter said nothing in response, presumably focused on work Cat couldn’t see. He had always been an attentive son, but these days he spent more and more time with her. Cat suspected that the birth of his first grandchild and worrisome results of an arterial health evaluation quite naturally put the subject of mortality into his mind. For her own part, Cat enjoyed his presence. In any given life there were only a handful of people worth the effort of time, and Carter was one of those people for Cat. She wanted to relish their good relationship while she could.

“It’s such a horrible thing, to grow old,” Cat mused out loud.

“Better than the alternative,” came Carter’s voice.

Her noise in response was noncommittal.

This particular spring day had dawned cloudy, but the early afternoon had brought warmth and clear skies over the area. It would be a nice day for a walk, Cat considered. Her home was an airy, late-20th century-style house which had been comfortably updated. It wasn’t the rich penthouses she had once claimed as her own, but the house had its own charm and, most importantly, it was private and had few memories to haunt her.

The abode and its gardens sat on a small lake an easy two hours’ ride from National City. She couldn’t bring herself to return to living in National City itself, but when Carter had permanently settled his family in that area for work Cat had sought out a nearby retreat for herself as a compromise. In these past few decades she had prioritized being near Carter and his family, particularly after Adam. Thoughts of her older son still brought an internal scream of despair and pain to her heart, though the intervening years had dulled its sharpness.

Standing from her chair, the book in one hand, Cat straightened her back as well as she was able and went to replace the book on the room’s inset shelving. Carter looked up at her, past whatever vision was carried on his glasses and directly into her eyes. “Mom, it won’t distract me if you have video on. I’m almost done with this, anyway.”

“I don’t want video on.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom,” Carter replied, looking back down at his lap as his pen flew through the air, making notions on whatever digital document he had up. “You’ve been restless ever since you heard about the threat to the delegate meeting this morning.”

She felt her lips and chin flatten into a frown. He was right – she had been restless about the rumors of threats against the beginning of the Conference – but she wasn’t about to comment. Cat had long ago learned that her son did not share her desire to push the world, to help direct the course of events. He was a creature of a different, less hardened era. The younger generations in general were so blasé about everything. They had grown up in a world of aliens and heroes, alternate earths and technological marvels. Regardless of the dangers humans could work ourselves into, or the threats inherent in trying to make a life on an active ball of semi-molten rock hurtling through space, these youth had come of age watching some entity or other pull humanity’s collective ass out of the fire again and again. They had no idea what it was to dream of a future, knowing you had to build it with your own hands.

As she had needed to do again and again.

As she no doubt would continue to do.

For a moment, Cat felt that old, familiar exhaustion and loneliness. This time again she shoved the feeling back down. This, by any accounting of it, had been a good life. One of the better she’d had. And for the first time in many millennia, she had a hope that reached beyond the next few decades or lives – a hope that she might not be alone.

“Betǝya, video scan for news on Supergirl.”

Carter ignored the video feed that began playing on the wall screen, images of a blonde woman who barely appeared of legal age to drink. His lack of interest was more than made up by the intensity of Cat’s perusal. She had known that Supergirl would be there with the delegates, ready for any threat – the Conference of Worlds was the product of decades of the blonde alien’s efforts. Cat had quietly and anonymous given what assistance she could over the years, at first because she held a curious affection for the young alien. Then, as time went on, Cat helped because she began to see potential futures in the other woman’s lopsided smile and blue eyes.

At first glance Supergirl didn’t seem to have changed much since the time Cat first saw her over forty years prior, except that the younger-looking woman had given up that hideous caped ensemble and gained a certain melancholy about the eyes. The Kryptonians didn’t seem to age, halted permanently in youthful adulthood. Cat stopped the scan on a feed which had Supergirl at a particularly good angle – the alien woman was speaking to one of the delegates from an alternate Earth, most likely someone she knew. She laughed easily and lightly, then turned back to scan the crowd again, a look in her eyes Cat most often associated with bodyguards and military officials. She didn’t age, but Supergirl had changed.

And watching those changes slowly, charmingly accumulate over the years had led Cat, in the twilight decades of this life, to begin wondering. She had tried to find others like her over the centuries – lamas and mystics and seers – but had never found anyone as uniquely burdened as she, burdened to recall clearly each life, one to the next, without any barrier or haze in between. Supergirl presented a new possibility, and they had already connected once. If Cat believed in fate, that serendipitous history would be more than enough to pique her interest.

Cat didn’t rely on fate, though. She relied on effort and planning. The timing hadn’t worked out well this time around, but time was hardly a scarce resource for either of them.

After some minutes had passed with Cat quietly sitting and watching the video, occasionally switching to another feed of the Conference, Carter released a heavy sigh and switched off his pen. “Well, that’s done,” he commented, removing his glasses and shifting in his chair. “All your little pet programs are updated.”

Cat reached over and squeezed Carter’s hand by way of thanks, then left hers atop his. She had long ago learned to set aside, whenever and wherever she could, caches of wealth or other resources for later lifetimes; the digital age had provided her with both new opportunities and new complications. There were various unattached accounts scattered at various banks throughout the world, linked to shell companies and other legal entities, which would require only logins, passwords, and pass phrases to access. Even with the turbulence of global political and financial uncertainty, at least some of the accounts should survive well past Cat’s own lifetime. They did require some financial management in this fast-paced world, however, as currencies rose and fell in value, or became defunct, or merged. For a select few of the accounts, Carter functioned as trustee. These particular accounts would automatically turn over to any of her great-grandchildren fifty years after her death, so Carter thought of them as a strange sort of guarantee that the family would remain comfortable. Cat simply knew that if she didn’t access them by the time the new life turned fifty, she probably didn’t need them.

Carter turned his own hand around to clasp his mother’s, and they together watched the opening speeches of the Conference of Worlds.

“I still don’t understand why you broke off your friendship with her,” Carter commented into the silence.

“With whom?”

“Mom,” Carter frowned, then waved at the screen with his free hand. “We’re still not going to have this conversation?”

Cat’s mouth was dry. This had been an issue between them for most of Carter’s life, ever since he shockingly informed her during his teenage years that he had known who Kara was the whole time and that Cat didn’t need to make decisions for his safety. In his thirties he and his therapist did “work” on the emotional impact of having a superhero’s temporary involvement in his life, and Cat’s “transference and projection issues” with super-powered beings or something-or-other. It didn’t matter how many times you did it, or how old you were, parenting never got easier. “Every family needs to have at least a few things they don’t talk about,” Cat replied. “Just do what your therapist told you to do – figure out what you want me to say, and then have me say it.”

“Damn it, Mom, I’m trying to be serious here. I’m trying to reach out. It’s not like we have a lot of time left.”

On the screen, there was a flash of light, a sudden jolt. Cat tried to gasp in shock, but couldn’t seem to draw in enough breath. The feed switched again, showing several blank channels, before picking up a video feed from a distant shot. Like bubbles rising to the surface of water, smoke clouds puffed up above the building where the Conference was being held. Cat felt ice-cold sweat erupt on her, and a sudden wave of nausea clenched in her stomach.

“What the hell-!” Carter was saying, as Cat’s vision started to narrow.

She had been through this often enough; she knew a heart attack when she felt one. Must’ve been the shock of the explosion, her mind analyzed as pain started to be replaced by gentle numbness and the sound of Carter’s shouts. She only hoped the explosion hadn’t been enough to kill Kryptonians. Carter had been right. There had been almost no time left at all.


	2. In the Middle of the Rubble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank everybody who's left kudos or comments. I really wasn't expecting this much of a response! This chapter is also quite short it's essentially a second part of the prologue from Kara's perspective, taking place the same day as the first chapter. Chapters should be longer in the future. Thanks for reading!

2060CE

Kara was still moving rubble in the late afternoon, looking for survivors, when she received the push notification to her HUD. She accepted the notice automatically, having spent most of the day coordinating with personal contacts at various intelligence agencies, national defense organizations, panicked off-world delegations, and the people whose actual job was to coordinate in the event of such disasters. When Kara saw the notification was just a news update, one she had set up to alert her when any of a select number of individuals were in the news feeds, she almost didn’t read it. But she accepted anyway, thinking she could stand to hear something of the outside world, have a reminder that elsewhere life went on.

That’s how Kara was standing in a gel-hazmat suit, surrounded by chunked concrete and twisted steel and the detritus of a lifetime’s political efforts, when she learned that Cat Grant had died.  
In her exhaustion and heartache, Kara momentarily wondered if the attack on the Conference and Cat’s death were linked, whether she had failed them both at the same time. Suddenly claustrophobic, she wanted to pull down the face cover of the suit and breathe in real air. Instead, she paused and focused on the tall corner of a nearby building, just visible through the particulate and smoke which still hovered in the air. She studied the corner and breathed until her heart-rate slowed and she grew calm again.

Kara had planned on working until 19:00 local time before taking a break, and that was still 45 minutes away. She could do this for 45 more minutes. Forty-five minutes was how long it took a car to drive from Alex’s to the old Danvers’ house, the length of an old hour-long TV show with the commercials taken out. Forty-five minutes wasn’t long. Plus, the physical activity would help keep her steady. She checked her HUD to re-orient herself in the search grid, and paused to listen again for any sounds of voices or scratching in the rubble.

Precisely forty-five minutes later, Kara walked off the site and into decontamination. Sprays, then peeling the close-fitting, gel-filled suit from her body, then another shower. Outside of the suit her skin felt tender and exposed, and she took longer than was probably necessary with her hair. They were running staggered shifts for the rescue and investigation efforts, so Kara wasn’t alone in the shower, but as they were behind the secured perimeter and away from the press everyone here was a professional focused on the task at hand, so Kara had to deal with only a handful of surreptitious stares. 

At a safe distance from the site, but still within the perimeter, they had set up the command center using materials which blocked her hearing ability. She knew the security rationale for it, but it was still aggravating. She pushed aside the opening and entered the room as unaware as anyone else. Conversation fell silent as she entered, and after quickly scanning the interior Kara approached the highest-ranking person receiving the highest number of hesitant looks. She tried to smile reassuringly, but even so she could hear how some of her frustration seeped into her voice. “What do we know?”

The kryptonite at the site was lab-created, and had a signature of something-or-other which might give them some leads. The concussive forces seemed to be additive from multiple explosive devices, not one. They thought the device pieces may have been brought in as parts over time and then built together in situ via small drones. Multiple groups had taken credit but none of those claims appeared credible.

Later on, sitting on a nearby roof watching the sun set, Kara let it all wash over her. She gave the teams credit – they’d put together quite a lot for having had only five hours.

But in the meantime, a dozen people she knew were dead along with dozens more she didn’t know, even more were seriously injured, the fragile discussions occurring between the various Earths and other planets could fray at any moment, and the Conference had been indefinitely postponed. It was only dumb luck that Kara had stepped out during the speech to use the bathroom and was outside of the main hall when the blasts went off.

Unless they were watching her and knew she was outside the hall, maybe wanted her outside the hall, because maybe if she’d been there she could’ve done something.

These were the thoughts she hadn’t been letting herself have during daylight hours.

She wiped her eyes, felt herself shaking slightly, exhaustion and weepiness settling in. This was no place to have an adrenaline crash. She quickly punched up Alex.

“Hey,” came the familiar voice in Kara’s ear.

“Hi,” Kara replied, watching the last of the day’s rays spread pink tones and shadow over the city. She wished she could just follow the sun, not let the day close out. “I just needed to hear a friendly voice.”

“Yeah, we’ve been watching. It’s been a hell of a day.” Alex’s voice was familiar, steady, calm. Her silence was welcome, too; Alex knew sometimes there wasn’t anything to say. “It might be hard to leave the site right now, but you could use the break. You want to spend the night here with us?”

Kara smiled, leaned her head towards the ear-piece as if Alex was actually there, as if she could rest her head on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m just so tired, Alex,” she said, tears coming again. “I’ve been so tired for so long.”

“I know you have. And today was really hard,” Alex said gently. 

For a short time, the only sounds were the industrial clamor of the convention site nearby, and the occasional shaky breath or sniffle from Kara.

“I don’t want to do it any more. I don’t want to go back later tonight or tomorrow. I don’t want to start over again from scratch with nobody else putting in this much effort, I don’t want to put a gel suit back on, I don’t want to keep finding dead friends. I know I should, I know they need me, but I just….” Kara trailed off, and Alex didn’t interrupt. “This is the worst time for me to get burned out, isn’t it?”

“We don’t choose when we get burned out,” Alex replied. “You’ve been through this before, though. You know what you need to do, and that’s take some time out. If you think you can get through the rescue efforts of the next week or so, great. But right now you need to rest.”

“Cat Grant died.”

Kara could hear Alex let out a breath. “Yeah, we heard.”

“It feels worse than I thought it would. We haven’t spoken in decades. But I keep thinking about her, Carter, those old memories.”

“You’re watching people who were once close to you get old and die. It’s going to hurt.”

And there it was. Alex’s voice stayed gentle, but still, no pulled punches from her sister. Alex wasn’t the person she called when she needed comforting lies.

Kara took in a steadying breath. Alex was right. This wasn’t a new pain; it was an old wound, newly strained. With the exception of her cousin – who had a tendency towards periods of neurosis himself – Kara had already lost everyone important to her, and would again. That’s all this was. She couldn’t get trapped in regrets. She could be here in this moment, she could take the pain. She’d done it before.

The sheltered lights of the city lit the streets below, as the first stars of the evening appeared in the darkened eastern sky. In a couple hours the Milky Way would be visible overhead. The 2037 law combating light pollution was still one of Kara’s favorites – when the law was signed she had left a gift-basket for the representatives who had proposed the bill.

“I need a break,” Kara said. “Maybe a long one this time. Maybe a year. A year sounds nice.”

“Going to take over the Fortress of Solitude for a while?” Alex asked, a bit of teasing in her voice.

“No,” Kara replied. “I’ll help clean up here, and then I’ll take off somewhere. A small uninhabited island with a nice beach.”

“Do you have somebody who can manage the fall-out from the conference?”

That was the problem, the issue that poked a hole in her fantasy of an island getaway. “…no. Not really.”

“Mm. I know I’m not hearing all your thoughts these days,” Alex began, and Kara winced. “But I know you’d hoped that if you got the ball rolling with the conference, got the different planets and alternate worlds to start communicating in a more systematic way, you could relax a bit. Right?”

“Yes….” Kara replied. “But, Alex, I-“

“The world is always going to have problems, Kara. You need to be willing to take time out for yourself even when the world needs you, and not always wait until the it seems like world doesn’t. Otherwise you’ll keep getting burned out. You’re in a marathon, not a sprint.”

“More like a hamster wheel,” Kara grumbled.

“My point is,” Alex continued, “you aren’t going to be able to fix everything just right so that you can settle down and take up finger-painting. Trust from my experience, retirement sucks when you don’t have anything to replace work with. And that means if you don’t want to burn out, you’ll have to sometimes just take off when the world is burning. Work something out with your cousin, maybe, get a system. But don’t keep putting it off.”

Kara was silent for a moment. “You know I’m not trying to shut you out, right? I just…. I mean, you’ve handled so much for so long.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kara,” Alex replied, her voice a little husky. “I’ve accepted my age, maybe not always gracefully, but I know what I can and can’t manage. A hip replacement will do that.”

They fell into silence, Kara’s mind pounding away at problems that didn’t seem fixable. She came to awareness with a start, realizing the machinery at the site had fallen silent, presumably to listen for signs of life in the rubble. Kara kept her breathing even, recognizing that the unexpected quiet had shot up her adrenaline again; she was jumpy.

No matter how much she’d learned, how much she’d grown into the role, she still wasn’t always sure who she needed to become. Even if she had to walk away from people in need for her own mental health, what would it mean for her to do that? Maybe she could turn her back on some abstract threat or political turmoil, but turning away from individual people in need, that she couldn’t do. And how would she manage in the future when everyone except Kal-El was gone? Her body was feeling heavy again, a hot freneticism in her muscles and a hollow feeling in her gut; years though it had been since those easier times, Kara wanted her mom again, her friends, her sister, pot-stickers, and her comfy pillow.

When the noises of machinery started up again, Kara uncertainly asked, “Alex? Still there?”

“Don’t worry, Kara. I’m still here.”

“Okay. I’m going to eat some dinner then head back to the site. Alright if I crash at your place tomorrow?”

“Always,” Alex replied.


	3. Wings and Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty-five years after the prior chapters, Kara has settled into a bit of a routine. Then a surprise request comes in from a close friend, and Kara finds herself on a curious - and possibly dangerous - quest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to thank everyone for all the comments and kudos. At some point I want to go through and give personal thanks for each comment, but until I've had time to accomplish that I hope you at least know that it's greatly appreciated.
> 
> There may be a minor spoiler in this chapter for anyone who hasn't watched up to the Music Meister in Season 2. Also, I pulled from the Superman comic universe for some of Kal-El's ongoing life circumstances.
> 
> Dadaab is a real place, though I'm taking many liberties as a writer about what may be happening there 70 years in the future. The Somali refugee crisis is one of the more protracted refugee crises in the world, and some voices are now suggesting that some refugee camps like Dadaab should be considered permanent installations. Some countries don't have automatic grants of citizenship to individuals born in their territory, which means that many individuals are born stateless (particularly if they can't prove parenthood or paternity). This area also is likely to be hit hard by climate change. I'd encourage anyone who's interested to read information from the UNHCR on refugee issues and other environmental and conflict issues in the Horn of Africa.

2085CE

Kara got up from the plush, vintage couch before the chime rang through the old house, having already heard the quiet buzz of the grocery delivery as it descended from the short-distance, residential lanes. The screen door squeaked as she opened it, and as she saw the delivery bot deposit the boxes on the porch Kara mentally made a note to oil the door’s hinges or see if they needed to be replaced. Maintaining this old place kept her 3D printer busy.

Grabbing the boxes of groceries from off the porch, two boxes on each arm, Kara maneuvered them into the kitchen and left them on the counter, before scanning the boxes with her house-control fob for sorting. The kitchen drones would take care of identifying each item in the boxes and putting them in their proper locations. The sorting system really was designed for use in delivery bays and commercial kitchens, but Kara figured she ate enough to justify the expense.

Returning back to the couch, Kara turned a critical eye to the painting in front of her. The scene was of a riotously green park in early summer, wildflowers blooming along stone pathways which led to a series of vertical community gardens twisting slowly to follow the sun. Or at least, that’s what it was supposed to be. Kara wasn’t entirely certain if the residents of Midvale would be able to recognize the locale – her painting technique still needed work. She added a few daubs and a bit of texturing in a few more spots, trying not to breathe directly on the screen lest it register her breath as a deliberate alteration to the piece.

A faint song began playing from hidden speakers, and Kara answered with a smile in her voice, recognizing the caller. “E-ya, Carter,” she greeted him. One of the best things Kara had done was reach out to Carter after his mother died, offered whatever assistance and recollections she could of a younger, more vibrant Cat Grant. Though she was the one who reached out to him during his time of grief, he had become an anchor for her over the past couple of decades. “How’re you doing?”

“Not too bad, can’t complain,” came his voice in response, wavering slightly. “How’re you doing?”

“Doing okay,” she replied, turning off the screen and rolling it up. “Enjoying some down-time. How’re Trisha and her kids doing? Still recovering okay from the Bowl Fever?” she asked, a bit of worry in her voice for Carter’s grandchild and great-grandchildren.

Carter let out a heavy sigh before answering. “Yeah, they are. The youngest is going to have some scarring, they think, but it looks like they’ll all pull through. Thanks again for the cells.” 

“Of course,” she said gently, standing in the living room, caught up in a wave of sudden melancholy. She let the wave wash over her and dissipate before she continued. “You know you don’t even need to ask for them. I don’t want commercial experimentation, but medical purposes…you’re family.”

Carter was silent for a moment. “I do actually have something to ask you. A favor. I know you’re on break, but….” Carter coughed a bit, and Kara heard him take a drink of something. She waited for him to continue. “Ugh, that’s better. Sorry. Anyway, there are these accounts. My mother set them up before she died, to pass on money to my grandkids. Over the past four months they’ve all been emptied out. Unexpectedly, not anybody we know.”

Kara headed into the kitchen to make herself a smoothie. “Okay, I’m following,” she said, waiting to see where he was going with this.

“The money was pulled in hard currency through intermediaries I’ve linked back to Dadaab.”

Neither spoke for the space of two heart-beats. “Carter, I’m hanging up now. You’re at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Open your window.”

Approximately six minutes later, Kara landed on the bamboo flooring in the private study of Carter’s summer house. The only occupant was standing by the glass patio doors, his face turned up to catch the early summer breeze in his grey-white hair. He opened his eyes and turned to face her, staring blankly in her direction – he must have turned off his visual uplink for the conversation. Given the hacking scandals that had plagued most of the bionet companies in the past few decades, Kara approved the decision. “Six minutes?” he asked, amusedly.

“I took it slow, didn’t want to set off any alarms,” Kara replied. “So, Dadaab.”

Carter nodded slowly, before gesturing at the other side of the room. “My desk,” he commented, and Kara took his arm as the two walked across the room, Carter moving with the hesitance of one unaccustomed to blindness. He coughed a few times, then cleared his throat. “You can understand why I’m worried? Money suddenly getting pulled out there, could be anybody, anything. I don’t know what you’ve heard recently about Dadaab,” he continued, reaching for the desk and starting to run his fingers over its top, searching for something.

Kara let go of his arm as he searched. She didn’t know Dadaab’s origin for certain – a refugee camp, she thought – but now it was essentially a densely-packed, corporate-run, industrial city of over a million inhabitants, a scant four-hour car ride from the cultural center of Nairobi. Operating in a region of desertification which was once eastern Kenya, most people in Dadaab were stateless, living out their lives as low-wage workers for one of the few major industrial centers still operating on Earth which used human labor. Since the corporations running the factories had taken over supplying the city, over-stretched international organizations directed their efforts elsewhere, and the region had no real government control. In theory, Dadaab was a safe, modern city and a model for corporate governance; as a practical matter, almost anything could be going on there.

And these days, particularly with the increasingly isolationist politics of most of the planets in the multi-verse, and the corporations resenting interference from any would-be heroes, “anything” was a broad category.

“I’ve heard rumors,” Kara began, as Carter located the desk’s control panel and swiped his hand across it in a complex pattern. “Nothing substantial. I know in the past few months the security rating went down, that a block has been put on new financing in the area.” Kara left it at that; she had learned to hold her tongue on occasion, even with her friends.

In response to Carter’s touch at the control panel, several screens extended over the desk, showing various figures and other information. Kara leaned over for a better look, trying to parse the data. “The first account was drained out about sixteen months ago,” he began. “I didn’t worry at first, the accounts were set up kind of oddly – no biometric verification, just passcodes and such, kind of anachronistic. And Mom sort of implied that she’d given the information to some people for use in emergencies, that something like that might happen. Then six months ago, it just started cascading. Now they’re almost all empty. I had to do some extra security on the remaining accounts to stop them from getting dried out, too, but there have been attempts on them.”

“And you linked this to Dadaab how?” Kara asked.

“It took time. Had to call in some favors. At first it wasn’t clear where the money was being taken out; whoever’s doing this set up shells of their own.” Carter’s normally calm voice had a growl to it. He was angry, and Kara realized how personal this was for him. “But the past accesses have been through a new corporation registered in New Zealand, of all places, and the only registered holding of this corporation is two factories in Dadaab, both purchased within the past six months. This folio is everything I have on the accounts, if you want it,” Carter offered, coughing into his left hand as he manipulated the control panel so the tables and figures flashed one after the other. “Histories, my personal notes, communications, everything I’ve tagged related to Mom’s stuff.”

Kara chewed her lower lip, then leaned back, grimacing and taking out her fob to record the data. She had accepted long ago that she had almost no interest in finances, and preferred not to do the investigative legwork of combing through such things. “So long story short is that you’re worried something’s going on in Dadaab, that it’ll be traced to you and the family’s holdings, and that the kids’ inheritance is getting pulled out for some shady reason.”

Carter felt along the desk to his chair, and lowered himself into it. “That’s the gist. And the rumor is that the corporations with holdings in Dadaab are getting skittish. Something about a new company with more than the usual private security forces, and using locals instead of hired guns.”

Kara crossed her arms, her fingers tapping as she began making connections. “So you’re also worried that the money is being used by some newcomer to build a private army or something? And this isn’t something you can fix through the usual channels.”

Carter leaned back in his chair, and began to speak, which prompted a coughing fit. Kara looked around quickly, and saw the glass of liquid resting nearby on his desk. Picking it up, she guided it to his hands and helped him take a drink. “Have you seen a doctor about the cough?” she asked when he was done, and he waved away her concern.

“Yes, just some bronchial inflammation. Doctor thinks I pushed too hard bouncing between El Alto and home. The altitude changes,” he explained. “But I’ll be fine. The negotiations are almost done.” Kara patted his shoulder affectionately. She didn’t really know what Carter’s business life entailed, and she ordinarily took the position that the less she knew the better. Her connection with the family was already an open secret, and she tried to keep some personal boundaries, at least when it came to money. This was an exception.

“I’ll check it out, see what I can find,” she told him, knowing her decision had been made ten minutes ago. “Do you have the name of the company?”

“Aganyent, Inc. No idea what it means. And the owner listed is Ladan Abdi.”

“Any intel on the owner?”

Carter shook his head. “It isn’t exactly an uncommon name,” he replied, and paused, his eyes staring out at the room. “I really appreciate you doing this.”

Kara took a deep breath. “Let’s wait on that until after I’ve done it.”

\--

She was over the north Atlantic when she messaged Kal-El and, just in case he was around, Mon-El. Kara didn’t really anticipate hearing from the latter, given how much time he spent on Daxam, but it was worth messaging him just to verify he wasn’t involved. Times like this more than justified the security and reliability of a small private satellite network.

“When you get this,” she began, enjoying the feel of the sun on her back as she flew, “I need any info you two have on what’s been going on Dadaab. Kal-El, your recent update mentioned they called you to do a distance scan for non-Terrans in that area because of a suspected off-worlder tied to the tension; I need those results if you have them. And Mon-El, if this is you dicking around I swear I will make you regret it.”

Kara was keeping low over the pole when her cousin called back. “Aren’t you supposed to be on sabbatical right now?” he asked by way of greeting. “I think this makes you 0 for 5 for actually finishing one.”

“Hypocrite,” Kara replied, teasingly. “Some of Cat Grant’s old accounts have been getting emptied out over the past few months,” she continued, her tone serious. “Carter has linked them to a brand new company which recently purchased a couple of factories there.”

“Hmm,” Kal-El commented. “I can see why you’d be worried. Sent the scan results to you, but they didn’t turn up any unexpected hits.”

Kara slowed her flight pace to double-check she heard correctly. “Does that mean there were expected hits?”

“You’re on sabbatical, remember?” her cousin responded.

“Kal-El,” she said warningly. He had become a little more emotionally distant in the past years, sometimes a little more sardonic. Her cousin had been through a lot since learning his and Lois’s son, Jon, wasn’t affected by Sol the same way the full Kryptonians were, wasn’t benefitting from the same ageless state, and since watching Lois’s decline and death. Kara tried to be sympathetic, though it was sometimes hard when she was nursing her own losses; she felt like Kal-El never tried to get to know Alex the way that Kara had gotten to know her nephew.

“Yeah, we had a couple people there,” Kal-El acknowledged, sounding resigned and tired. “But they had registered, been screened, and we had tracers on them. If they were involved, they were good about covering their tracks. Passed the info onto the corporations there, they weren’t concerned about them.”

Kara let out a sigh. If the off-worlders were registered and appropriately traced, she was prohibited from accessing their personal information unless it was pertinent to an official investigation. And putting this through official channels would just be messy.

“Okay, thanks, cousin. Let me know if you think of anything or hear anything?”

“Will do. Call me if you need me. Good hunting, Kara.”

For the rest of the flight she thought over what she knew, best approaches, and the time-frame or conditions in which she should call it quits. There was an odd feeling about this she couldn’t shake, and she had tried to become better about listening to her gut. She took a route through eastern Europe, avoiding any major cities and doing her best to not accidentally set off an international incident simply by racing through the sky.

She landed on the outskirts of the city of Dadaab in the early pre-dawn hours, touching down on a deserted maintenance access balcony for one of the large smokestacks. Kara unslung the pack she brought with her, and pulled out work clothes, high-quality disguise cosmetics, and a long shawl to cover her hair. With these she at least wouldn’t be as obvious or attract attention at first glance. Once attired, Kara pushed up the sleeves and fiddled with the controls on her suit to put out extra heat and some scrambling signals, which would hopefully cause her image to white out on cameras and disrupt any wireless feeds which might pick her up. She technically wasn’t supposed to have this suit, which could also keep her off radar, but it was a gift from an old off-world friend and Kara figured that she deserved to keep _some_ secrets from Earth’s governments.

Satisfied that she was as secure as she could make herself, Kara sidled down to an abandoned public access walkway. Below her, Dadaab roiled in a mad tangle of glass, metal, and concrete. Kara’s piercing eyes could spot the remnants of old stream and river beds to the north and the south, though the water that flowed in them had clearly dried up decades ago as temperatures shifted. Outside the heavily guarded walls, on all sides, arid land was spotted with a few stalwart clumps of straggling brush or, increasingly, sand dunes. For a moment Kara thought back to Krypton, and she shivered as she entered the complex, industrial passageways of the city.


	4. Bellies of Beasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lengthy break before this chapter. Had a bit of illness and had to let this slide, then just couldn't seem to get back into things.
> 
> But the friend to whom this is dedicated is now apparently headed overseas, so I had appropriate motivation to keep going. Hope you all like it.

A net search of Dadaab would turn up thousands of images. They showed clean and wide hallways, well-lit with full-spectrum light, hypoallergenic strains of pollen-free plants, women with white-teethed smiles and chubby babies. Kara had even gone through the “casual” user-generated images which were location-tagged to Dadaab, and though the specific location data was usually scrubbed from such photos so that identifying the precise spot was impossible, the photos were obviously of only corporate-approved areas. No one actually believed these pictures represented the truth of the city, but the world was willing to let the polite falsehood lie. 

The low-ceiling hallway into which Kara entered was dimly lit, pipes and masses of old-style fiber networking cables snaking along the wall, and a constant push of forced air blew down the passageway from her left. Closing the door behind her as quietly as possible, she wondered how long it would be before she saw the sun again.

Once enclosed in the darkness, her eyes adjusting, she stopped to listen for the muffled sounds of early-morning activity. The walls and floor hummed with the vibration of far-off industrial movement, making a constant drone. The sound seemed ever so slightly louder to the right, the same direction that air blew, so that was the direction Kara chose to go.

As the minutes ticked by in the dim light, the passageway began to slope downward, and Kara could now see the slight wear in the floor from the movement of heavy wheeled carts. That relieved a bit of her tension – if the maintenance procedures here used carts they weren’t using silent hovers, and she would hear them coming. She pulled out a protein bar from an inner pocket and began to chew, occasionally leaving barely-perceptible marks on the ceiling with her heat vision to mark her passage as she began encountering doors and intersections.

A second protein bar was gone and she had left twenty-two marks by the time her chosen path emptied out into a wider hallway, stretching in either direction. The lighting was slightly brighter, though still very dim, and the ceilings still low, but there was old and dusty signage on the walls written in English, Chinese, Swahili in both scripts, and a language in Latin script which Kara didn’t know. It was plenty. She’d find her way to a public area, and then start the hardest part of investigative work – sitting patiently and listening.

\--

Early afternoon local time, Kara was at a table eating spicy-sauced pasta. The common dining area where she sat was crowded and loud with chatter, as friends and family met for a shared meal during the workday. This seemed to be one of the common zones shared between corporations, as people with different work uniforms mingled along with a few people dressed similarly to Kara. She had attracted a few curious looks, and a handful of children had come up to her through the day asking if she’d like to buy tea or coffee, but she hadn’t seemed to garner any more attention than that.

The circular room had tables and chairs, vending machines, a few well-patronized hand-carts selling food, and hallways and doors heading off in multiple directions. Groups of men and the occasional woman, guns slung on their backs, moved carefully in groups along the outskirts of the room. Kara kept her head down and movements casual, but none of them seemed interested in her.

The armed groups’ close-fitted garments were of different colors and patterns, and Kara understood them to be the private security forces of various corporations. The way groups avoided risking more than a quick appraising glance at each other, and the wide berth which the other workers gave these groups, made clear that on occasion the guns were for more than show.

This was the third such public area where Kara had spent time today, her ears tuned towards the conversation around her. She had slowly learned more about the city, traded a few of her items to several different people begging in exchange for what passed as local corporate currencies, then traded the currency to another person for a “lost” identity wristband. The wristbands were loaded with workers’ incomes, and were the only thing in most of Dadaab which could access the vending machines and automated store-fronts.

Luckily, Kara could also add value to the wristband at kiosks which took corporate currencies, as well as numerous country-specific currencies such as US dollars and Chinese yuan. Dadaab’s managers tacitly encouraged its brisk black market.

The city also seemed to house a large population of subsistence workers. Emaciated men and women – and a few children – slept in the hallways around the common areas. When morning had broken in full, Kara had joined a group of them as they traveled to a large, corporate-owned warehouse room where a local man in a suit called out the number of extra hands needed that day. After a brief clamor, a few lucky workers had been selected and the rest dissipated to spend the day begging or hawking goods in the common hallways.

So far conversations about the Aganyent corporation had been mentioned only a handful of times – rumors about pay rates and working conditions discussed in Swahili, but they were only rumors, and two conversations in a language Kara couldn’t follow. The name Ladan Abdi wasn’t mentioned at all.

She pushed away the empty pasta plate, her stomach dissatisfied with the small amount of food, and felt a form rest down into the seat next to her. The form was undeniably female, and young – she could see that from the slide of fabric and one unblemished arm, three-quarter sleeved, resting on the table next to Kara. If Kara had been painting the arm, she would have used Zinnwaldite brown as the base skin tone, and a warm red for the sleeve.

The voice which spoke was also undeniably female, the English words slowly cadenced and deeply accented. “Why you here?”

Kara raised her head at that just enough to look at the speaker. Dark, bright eyes, hair ostentaciously uncovered and twisted in elaborate braids, a firm mouth. Mid-twenties, underfed but with lean muscle, a small bulge in her garment’s left side which could be a pouch or a holster.

Kara paused for a moment before answering. The woman could have approached because she wanted to sell something, or even certain “services,” Kara considered grimly. She could be part of the city’s enforcement, but something in Kara’s intuition told her that the woman in front of her would have no interest in that sort of role. Kara decided to answer her, wondering how much English the woman spoke. “Aganyent. Ladan Abdi,” she said, quietly but slowly and clearly to be sure she understood. “Do you know them?” Then she tried the question again in Swahili.

The other woman rolled her eyes, though Kara couldn’t tell if it was amusement or disdain. “It’s been a while since I’ve spoken in English, but I am fluent,” she replied, her words still accented but a bit faster. “I just need to work the rust off. Anyway, you’re here for Abdi. Why?”

Kara’s internal alarms were screaming. She glanced over at the armed groups but they were paying their table no interest. The woman reached out and tugged Kara’s chin back. “Don’t look at them, look at me,” her voice warned, and her eyes grabbed Kara’s. They seemed steady, holding her gaze, like anchors sunk at the bottom of a wet sea, and for an insane moment Kara wondered if she was being hypnotized.

“If you want to know more about Ladan Abdi, stand up slowly and come with me,” the other woman said in her slowly, carefully articulated way, before releasing Kara’s chin. “And stop looking at the corporate goons.”

 _Goons?_ Kara wondered, not having heard that particular anachronism for over half a century. She followed the red-garbed woman to her feet, and was surprised to discover that the woman was several inches shorter than her. For some reason Kara had assumed the stranger would be taller.

Tense, but trying not to let that show, Kara kept her head lowered as she followed the woman out of the dining area. Neither of them bothered to clear the remnants of her meal – slight figures were already moving towards the table to gain whatever could be salvaged from the discards.

As they began walking down one wide corridor, then quickly turned down a smaller and louder off-shoot, Kara kept her hands hidden under one end of her scarf. She surreptitiously enabled typing-mode on her garment, and let her fingers subtly pick out words as if on an unseen keyboard. The garment, registering the subtle muscle movements in her wrist and arm, transcribed the short message her fingers keyed out. There might be some typographical errors, but Kal-El would get the gist. She set the short message to automatically send to Kal-El in two hours. If it didn’t seem that she would need his assistance in two hours’ time she could cancel it.

The small corridor emptied into a laundry room, and the woman took a sharp right and exited through a door into another wider corridor. “Where are we going?” Kara asked in English, moving closer to the woman and her quick, evenly fluid stride.

The woman didn’t look at Kara as she answered, and Kara could now see that she was scanning the people ahead of them as they walked. “I’m going to take you to the territory of the company you asked about. But I have a quick stop to make before taking you there.” At that point the woman glanced quickly over at Kara’s face. “It’s a personal matter. I hope you don’t mind.”

Kara kept her face neutral. “What kind of personal matter?”

The woman reached into her garment, and to Kara’s relief pulled out a small bag marked with medical information. She then quickly returned it to the inner pocket. “My mother’s medicine. Plus some extra to pay for her care. I have to bring it to her.”

Kara felt her face soften, only then realizing how tightly she had been keeping it under control. “I’m sorry to hear your mother’s sick.”

The woman nodded, but she didn’t reply. They walked in silence for a few more moments before turning down another hallway. The constant, artificial breeze couldn’t quite hide the scent here of too many people living near another. One heavy plastic door along the hallway opened slightly to show a young, wide-eyed and skinny child of two or three peering out. As they passed, Kara could see beyond the child a stretched long room lined with beds in a style that reminded Kara of older, decommissioned barracks. A woman’s voice shouted from inside the room, and the child closed the door abruptly.

After a few more minutes the woman stopped in front of another non-descript, industrial-style door. She raised her hand as if to open it, then pulled back and looked at Kara, a tone in her voice that could have been either exhaustion or anger. “Cancer. It’s cancer that she has. Many of us here die from it,” she said, before reaching out to open the door.

Kara followed the woman through, a bit heartbroken. Aside from the rare case, almost all cancers now were eminently treatable and hardly ever proved fatal. Though, judging from the facilities Kara saw on the other side of the door, none of those treatments would be available to the residents of Dadaab.

She took in the sight of a man laying in a low bed, who for a moment reminded Kara of her deceased fathers though he looked nothing alike either of them. The man’s face was sunken, his hands nearly skeletonized, his skin a stretched and oil-free pallor, and his breath creaked and strained like an old house in the wind. His unfocused eyes were open to the ceiling. A young man, sitting on the floor by the bed, looked up at Kara and the woman as they passed by. His eyes contained a sorrow Kara had seen too often – a sorrow that knows hope is gone but clings to it regardless.

This was the kind of thing Kara knew she wasn’t good at – being confronted with the most grotesque realities of human suffering while feeling completely impotent to do anything about it. She focused on the woman in front of her, took a deep breath, and accepted that she would add this memory to the long list of other things she carried.

They passed five beds before the woman stopped, and Kara looked up to see a middle-aged woman frowning and gesturing. “ _Hooyo_ ,” she began, before speaking quickly in a language Kara couldn’t follow. The young woman sat on the bed next to her, pulling out the bag and grasping the older woman’s hands, before reaching out to affectionately and intimately touch her hair. Kara turned her face away from the scene, wanting to give them space, but she couldn’t find anywhere else in the room to rest her eyes that didn’t intrude upon another family’s private pain.

After a few moments she heard the rustle of fabric and the young woman was at her side, gesturing for Kara to follow her toward the door. Kara, unsure of what to do, bowed her head slightly to the middle-aged woman, who chuckled, grimaced in pain, and shook her head before waving Kara off towards her daughter.

When the two of them got back into the hallway, Kara held her breath to the count of six before releasing it slowly, trying to quell the anxiety that had come over her in that room. The woman waited, one hand lightly resting on the door-frame, her mouth working slightly as if worrying a sourball. “My mother is 47 years old,” she finally said, before turning and gesturing Kara to follow her.

Kara sensed a familiarity in the woman’s unstated pain. Perhaps it reminded her of her own losses. Kara was still wary, still didn’t trust her, and had grown cynical enough to recognize that others might deliberately manipulate her emotions. Even so, she couldn’t help but feel sympathy towards the woman in red. She realized she hadn’t learned her name.

“I’m sorry again about your mother,” she said as they walked, the smell of human density still thick in the air of the passages. “It’s always hard to lose a parent.”

One of the woman’s eyebrows quirked upward as she continued walking. “Children should outlive their parents,” she replied, as if Kara’s comment were droll. “Their deaths may be hard, but the part that makes me angry is that she will have had so little life with so little joy in it. She sacrificed everything for me. I am her only daughter.”

Kara began trying to think of something else to say, but the woman stopped abruptly and held her hand up. Ahead of them was a group of uniformed men with guns, and telescoping her vision closer Kara could see that at least one of them was scanning a device which registered all passerby’s biometric data.

The woman grabbed Kara’s arm and pushed her back and into a nearby doorway before Kara could comment. “We’ll go around,” the woman said, pushing the door open into a stairwell. They went up two flights, then down a corridor and into a room which became a walkway over a large industrial processing center, where Kara could see tables of people systematically taking apart electronic devices ranging from bio-implants to macro-machinery. Even from the protected walkway Kara could feel the artificial cold of the room below, as hundreds of people worked stripping wiring and de-soldering bits of rare metals. Hovering boxes – seemingly color-coded – zoomed systematically through the room, collecting the constituent elements salvaged from the devices.

“I hadn’t-” Kara got out, before the woman turned around, one finger up to her mouth, shushed Kara, and took her hand to pull her along. The woman’s hand – strong, rough in patches as it slipped and slid slightly against Kara’s own skin – continued to hold Kara’s as they navigated more corridors, neither saying anything. They were still holding hands as they came across another group of people with guns, though this time without uniforms. However, here the woman walked right through with a few words to the guards, who only nodded in return.

The woman only let go of Kara’s hand after another few twists and turns brought them to a dead-end, decorated with a delicately tiled mosaic of a moon rising over and reflected in the ocean. “I suspect you didn’t bring me all this way to admire the artwork,” Kara said, chancing a quip.

“No, I didn’t.” The woman turned to Kara as she placed her hand on one of the tiles. “It’s well and good that you want to see Ladan Abdi, Kara Danvers,” she said as the wall ahead of them opened suddenly into darkness. “Because she wanted very much to see you.”


	5. Chasing Rabbits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting the leadership of the corporation she's investigating, Kara learns there's far more going on than she had anticipated.

Having a secret identity had given Kara a particular sensitivity around hearing her name. Even though in recent decades her public and private personae had merged, she was still hyperconscious about who was calling her by name, and what name they were using when they did so. She had brought her hands up in an automatic defensive posture almost as soon as she heard "Kara" leave the other woman’s lips.

But then Kara halted in uncertainty, as the woman ignored Kara’s response and glided purposefully into the darkness. Lights, obviously motion-sensing, popped the room beyond the door into vision. It was a medium-sized room, a plush rug in the center, a desk on the other end of the carpet and a table to one side which both appeared to be of solid wood. Kara remained outside the room as the woman moved to the desk, adroitly leapt to sit on it, crossed her legs – the gesture creeping her long tunic up, revealing embroidery on the dark, loose leggings underneath – and reached to press a hand gently on the desk’s surface. “We’re here,” she said, before looking up at Kara with amusement twinkling in her eyes. “Though our guest seems unwilling to actually enter the room.”

Kara put her hands down a bit, but stopped herself from responding to the unspoken dare. Her impulse to prove herself had gotten her into trouble too many times over the years. She would wait.

The other woman also seemed patient, watching Kara with an easy, fixed smile for the few minutes it took before a wall in the room suddenly, abruptly, opened. As Kara shifted her eyes to the new exit, alarmed and self-critically wondering if she’d have noticed the hidden door if she’d been paying better attention, another young woman stepped through.

As the newcomer entered and approached Kara, her eyes unassuming in their eagerness to look Kara over, Kara also examined her in turn. Her skin was close to the same deep hue as Kara’s guide, but there the similarities ended. She met Kara’s height, and wore a tailored suit of a cut which bespoke conservative tastes. Her tightly-curled hair was close-cropped, and while the woman in red had the tight, lean muscle of one whose childhood had known privation, this woman moved with the coordinated and purposeful grace of someone whose body had been honed with years of training. Her visage suggested she may be a local, but Kara felt there was something tantalizingly familiar about the shape of her jaw and the curve of her nose. The two women, both in Kara’s vision, seemed as different as a wary street cat and a proud war-horse.

“I have been very eager to meet you,” the woman in the suit said, stopping a safe ten feet from Kara. “And have thought again and again what I would say to you in this moment. But now I find I am awkwardly at a loss for words. Still, we could speak more freely if you came inside the room. Even though we control these corridors, it’s impossible for us to completely guarantee the security of a conversation held in the hallway. I promise you, we mean you no harm.”

“That promise is made far more often than it’s kept,” Kara replied. She tried to determine how long it had been since she’d set the message to auto-send to her cousin after two hours. Perhaps half an hour ago?

Kara, her awareness primed, saw the woman in red shaking her head in apparent exasperation. As the woman in the suit frowned and opened her mouth to speak, the woman in red interrupted, the timbre of her voice carrying easily in the room. “You’re here because you have questions. We sought you out because we need your help. If you leave, no one gets what they want. Haven’t you learned,” she said, tilting her head to the side, “sometimes you have to take risks to get what you want?”

Kara unconsciously moistened her lips. She hated feeling trapped into a single course of action, but the woman was right – the only way forward was…well, forward. She took a quick breath through her nose, stepped across the threshold, and kept her face calm as the door closed swiftly behind her.

\---

The three of them were seated at a large, wooden table, before a staggering amount of food. Almost as soon as Kara had entered the “front office,” as they called it, the two women had Kara ushered out of the room and into opulent living quarters. As the woman in red led them out the side door and down the corridor, her back stiff with some unspoken tension, the woman in a suit eagerly pointed out various rooms they passed before they entered the well-supplied dining room. 

The woman in red had sat down first, a slight frown on her face as if in concentration, and began carefully and selectively placing food on a plate for herself, her left hand resting gently on her lap. The other woman was less restrained. Only Kara selected nothing, and took a seat hesitantly, as the woman in red poured tea for the three of them.

“She’s Bilqiis,” the woman said as she handed Kara the tea, the cup still cool to the touch except where the other woman’s hands had held it. The woman in the suit – Bilqiis – nodded in introduction as she ate. “I’m Ladan,” the woman continued.

“You’re Ladan Abdi?” Kara asked, some surprise in her voice as Ladan handed tea to Bilqiis, who smiled her thanks. Kara had thought for certain the woman in the suit was the one managing the company.

“No,” Ladan replied as she sat down. “Abdi is,” she snaked her hand and head, an expression that conveyed some ambivalence, as if she was looking for a word. “It’s a name of convenience. She doesn’t really exist.”

“Do you know about the Niobe Project?” Bilqiis asked, leaning towards Kara, her tone and face earnest and conspiratorial.

“Right into the deep end, then,” Ladan replied, settling back in her chair with her tea.

“I suspect Kara learned to swim at a young age,” Bilqiis retorted, before turning her deep, eager eyes back to Kara’s face. “Did you? Were there seas on Krypton?”

Kara, already tense, was having trouble keeping up with the flow of the conversation. She needed to find firm ground. “What’s the Niobe Project?” she asked.

Bilqiis drew back slightly and began picking at some of the flatbread on her plate, her face in a neutral expression. “This may be unsettling for you to hear. Several corporations still have copies of alien DNA, you know that,” she began, and Kara nodded slowly. The 2041 Convention on the Status of Humanity prohibited signatory nations from permitting certain forms of experimentation using alien DNA or creating alien-human chimera, but before that there had been many varied uses put to alien DNA, both well-meaning and otherwise, and the Convention still permitted certain narrow bands of research.

“The Niobe Project,” Bilqiis continued, steadier and stiller in her seat than Kara had seen her thus far, almost reminiscent of one of the old newscasters from the turn of the century, “was a project between three companies with a presence in Dadaab to create human-Krypton hybrids.”

Bilqiis kept speaking over Kara’s sudden exclamation of shock and outrage. “The oldest viable generation are now 24 years of age, they pass as human, and scan as Terran in standard screening processes.”

“The Convention-” Kara began, and she could hear the anger in her voice.

“Doesn’t apply in Dadaab,” Ladan finished, just as Kara came to the same realization. “We’re not governed by any signatories here. And the International Court of Corporate Oversight, assuming it ever actually gets the funding to do anything substantial, can only launch an inquiry at the request of an affected state. Here, the corporations are their own law. What happens in Dadaab stays in Dadaab,” she finished drolly over a sip of her tea.

“You said the oldest viable generation is 24?” Kara asked weakly, trying to focus on one thing at a time.

Bilqiis nodded, a flash of some deep emotion crossing her face for an instant. “It took them a few tries to get it right,” she commented in her normal tone.

“But to what end?” Kara asked. “Why do this?”

“There are an endless number of conflicts in the multiverse where the participants would be happy to pay for a trained warrior with Kryptonian abilities,” Bilqiis explained in a measured tone. “Where there’s a market…” she trailed off.

“They’re SELLING people?” Kara roared in horror.

“No, no!” Bilqiis replied, her calm demeanor gone, hands up as if to ward off the terror of that thought. “Not selling. But putting pressure on them as children, setting up placements, encouraging off-worlders to come view the training areas.”

“They’re valued resources,” Ladan replied calmly, though having known her for only a short time Kara could already tell she was being slightly sardonic from the angle of her head and the twist of her mouth. “They’re paid, given perks while not in the chain of command, treated like subject matter experts. Think like…contractors. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard,” Ladan continued after a short pause, turning her gaze to Bilqiis.

“You see why we need your help,” Bilqiis said to Kara. “We need to stop this. Or do something. We’ve only just started up Aganyent, we don’t have the resources or the power to fix this on our own.” Her face was calm, but Kara could see from the firm set of Bilqiis’s jaw that a lot of emotion rode on Kara’s answer. Suddenly, Kara had an inspiration for why the woman’s nose and jaw seemed so familiar; Bilqiis looked like her cousin.

“Bilqiis, if you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

The other woman’s sudden indrawn breath – quiet, and ever so slight, but still there – told Kara she was on to something. “I’m 24,” she answered, with a heavy exhalation.

Kara was quiet for a moment. “I’ll help,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Of course I’ll help. Or at least do what I can.”

Bilqiis smiled brightly, and Kara could palpably feel her sense of relief. “I’ll go get my portable,” the younger woman said, and stood determinedly before striding from the room.

Ladan was still slowly, methodically eating her lunch. “Now down the rabbit hole we go,” she said quietly, almost resignedly.

Kara turned her full gaze on the other woman, watched as she pinched a portion of bread and scooped a tiny amount of sauced riced. There was an expression on her face that, in an older woman, Kara would have thought expressed world-weariness, but on Ladan’s young face just seemed out of place. Then the woman looked up at Kara, caught her eyes, and smiled impishly, and the sense was gone.

“I think I’ve figured out a bit of Bilqiis’s story,” Kara said, “but I haven’t yet figured out yours.”

Ladan shrugged, looked down at her tea and swirled her cup. “In the beginning I just wanted to help my mother. I wanted to get her somewhere for treatment.” She looked up. “I’m still hoping you’ll help with that. I can’t get her a corporate passport for another six months, and by then it may be too late. The situation really is desperate.”

Kara replied with frustration in her voice. “This makes no sense. How did you get the money for all this?” she asked, gesturing around the room. “Couldn’t you treat her here?”

Ladan put down her cup, threw her hands in the air, and instantly Kara felt as if she’d just said the most ridiculous nonsense ever. “And where would I get the doctor experienced enough to treat her? How could I get the equipment, the facilities? You think money solves everything?” she asked, and leaned forward, making her garments press tight against her hips and thighs. “Yes, I took the money from Cat Grant’s accounts, which I guess is what brought you here. If you help me I’ll show you how, even put the money back. Or some of it,” Ladan shrugged, and Kara made a threatening noise of disapproval. “We spent it all. It’ll take time to make returns, assuming Bilqiis’s efforts don’t bankrupt us. But,” she continued, wagging a hand in Kara’s direction, “I need to get her treatment. And she’s not the only one. This whole place needs to be pulled out by the roots. It’s rotten all the way down,” she finished, slicing her hand dramatically through the air.

Kara didn’t know whether to be angry or sympathetic. She settled on the former. “You could be having your mother stay here. Look at all this food,” she gestured at the table. “Look at the bedrooms we passed. You’re living in luxury and keeping her there.”

Ladan calmly looked at the wall, where well-behaved nanite-filled wallpaper subtly counted the time. “By now she should be back in her bedroom here, actually. I’ll go see she’s settled in in a few minutes.”

Kara’s breath hitched. This was too much. “You lied to me,” she said coldly, though it held a bit of a whine.

Ladan glanced at Kara, looked away, lowered her eyes, and glanced back to settle her gaze on Kara’s neck. “I manipulated you,” she admitted, before raising her eyes to meet Kara’s gaze. “But only so you could understand the truth better. If you had seen this first,” she continued, one hand encompassing the room in a grand gesture, “you wouldn’t have understood. Not really.”

Kara, her eyes evaluatively on Ladan’s calm and open face, could hear Bilqiis’s footsteps coming down the hallway. She reached down to her left wrist, and deactivated the automatic distress message.


End file.
